The 2084 Precept (23 page)

The waitress appeared and I ordered a
coffee. Céline didn't want another one or anything else, she didn't
want me to be spending any money on her, one coffee was the limit.
I lit up a cigarette.

"Coleridge," I said. "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner. Some say he wrote it as a result of some
conversations he had with Wordsworth."

"You know a bit about poetry?" she asked,
her eyes brightening and looking straight into mine for the first
time.

English Literature, a major finding, a
useful weapon, noted down accordingly under the neuron filename
'Very Valuable Information'.

"I did some at school, but to be truthful
I've forgotten most of everything. '
Yea, slimy things did crawl
with legs—upon the slimy sea
'", I quoted with a smile, just to
show that I was not only knowledgeable but modest about it into the
bargain. In fact I was neither. Those two lines were my favorite
schoolboy ones and are the only Coleridge lines I can nowadays
quote. Not that Céline has a need to know that.

Her smile broadened, the chipped tooth
melted my spine again, and she leaned across the table and gave me
a look which I can only describe as adoring; like I was some kind
of a guru, but perhaps I was kidding myself.

"You are a literary person, Peter," she
said. "Literary people are people who have feelings. And people who
have feelings can be very happy sometimes and they can be very sad
sometimes. And that's because they live more intensely, things
affect their feelings more deeply than they do with other kinds of
people. Tell me, has a novel or a poem or a movie ever made you
cry?"

This was all very good news indeed. While
the lottery chances weren't exactly increasing much, there was at
least a clear strategic direction for me to follow. To which can be
added the fact that she had actually used my name. I will be using
hers soon, but not just yet—extreme caution was still the only
viable tactic. Like playing the Cambridge Springs Defense as
black—it might get you there in the long run but you need to be
extremely patient and careful or you might get killed. A boring
defense, nothing empirical about it, I don't play it.

"Yes," I said slowly, "on a few occasions."
This happens to be true, but never overdo it, it can cause
suspicion. "And certain pieces of music can make me emotional as
well, but you know how we men are, we try to keep our tears at
bay."

Right tone, I think. Right balance.

"Have you ever written anything?" she asked.
Pushed up her glasses again.

"Not really. I wrote a couple of short
stories when I was young and I wrote a few poems as well. Since
then I have written a few articles on this or that for minor
publications you would never have heard of. But that's it, you are
not having lunch with a famous novelist or some other kind of
literary celebrity, I'm afraid."

"Were any of your stories or poems
published?"

"A couple of poems. Back in the day. But
minor stuff, minor publications. I was paid £10 each for the two
poems, can you imagine that? A kind of scrap metal value."

"What kind of stories and poems did you
write?"

"Well, let me see. The stories were either
romantic ones, or dark and nasty thrillers. The poems started off
being romantic ones because I was in my early teenage years and you
know what we're all like back then." I chuckled and hoped she was
silently chuckling as well and thinking
back then, but now we're
more mature
. "But then I started choosing stranger subjects,
just to be different. That was the only aim really, to be
different."

"And do you still write things?"

"Oh no," I laughed, "I'm not good enough for
it and on top of that it's too much hard work. Two pretty good
reasons, don't you think? But I may continue to contribute an
article or two, here or there, at some point in the future, who
knows? I might even write a business book one day. No idea."

"What exactly do you do business-wise?" she
asked, still looking at me in that admiring way. The great POD. If
nothing else, she has become interested in me, not as a man, I
don't think so, but as a person. Progress of a kind.

"I'm a consultant, self-employed, I help
companies. It means that I travel a lot, but usually only in
Europe. And I like my work and so I am a happy guy. If you enjoy
your work, you enjoy your evenings, you enjoy your weekends,
and—quad erat demonstrandum—you enjoy your life."

"I have never heard it put like that before,
Peter. You have just described a hugely important philosophy using
a few very simple words. You are an interesting man."

Aha, a major advance. Women love
'interesting' men as much as they love 'humorous' men or men who
can cook. I glanced sideways at her and she was looking at me in
that way again.

"And you are off to one of your consultancy
jobs now?" she continued. "Is it somewhere in France?"

I wish it were, oh how I wish it were.

"No," I said, "It's in London. For a few
more days or a few more weeks, I'm not sure yet."

"Hmm," she said again, "you are an
interesting man."

She didn't say anything else, she just
looked at me and smiled. That tooth, it drove me crazy.

We stayed like that for a while, looking at
the goldfish. I snuck a few careful glances at her breasts out of
the corner of my eye. Very careful sidelong glances. And then I
went inside to the bar and paid the bill.

She went quiet again in the car and I
decided to do the same. I think she was the kind of girl who liked
a bit of silence between two people, not all of the time but some
of the time. So do I. If you are really attracted to someone it's a
comfortable feeling, not having to talk all the time. You can both
think your thoughts or you can be like Mr. Brown and do some deep
philosophizing.

It was great weather for driving, but hot. I
switched the air conditioning on. We were a long way past Metz
before I said, "And what are you doing this evening Céline? In
Reims?"

There. I had used her name. Not too soon I
hope, don't think so.

"Oh nothing. I'll just be checking into the
hotel, wandering about and doing some shopping."

Here we go, as low-risk as we can.

"Nothing? Well, why don't we go out for a
drink afterwards, or a meal perhaps?"

"Oh no. No thank you."

"Or the cinema? Nicer than just doing
nothing on your own."

"No."

This was not good, not good at all. 'No' on
its own sends a powerful signal. Best not to say anything for a
while again. I couldn't think of anything appropriate anyway.

The countryside we are driving through is
green. Pleasant, nothing spectacular; it is, after all, fairly flat
Champagne country. It is also mass slaughter country, an area where
untold millions of young humans died in World War I in places such
as Verdun. Plenty of young human skeletons still beneath the
turf.

My silence lasted for about half an
hour.

And then I decided to put a question to her
of the kind you should never, ever put, to a woman after she has
told you no. But with my lottery chances now down to about 10%, if
that, I figured I had little to lose.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Why not what?"

"Why not go to the cinema?"

"Peter, it's not about going to the
cinema."

"It's not?"

"No."

"What's it about then?"

"It's about what you are going to want
afterwards."

A nuclear bomb.

Of course she was right. My faithful neurons
immediately slammed into high speed, extremely high speed, and
produced a psychologically correct answer within about 0.8
seconds.

"Céline, I have to admit you're right. Yes.
Yes, I
was
thinking about that. But O.K., let's forget it
please, I won't try anything, I won't say anything, it is something
I won't even think about anymore, I promise you, I guarantee
it."

No, I am not a liar. I am merely an honest
man who occasionally lies.

"Let's just go to the cinema," I continued
in desperation. "I enjoy your company, we don't have to have a meal
afterwards if you don't want to, I'll just get back in my car and
drive off on the road to Calais. Catch a night ferry, be in London
early morning."

She thought about this shameless and
pathetic begging for a while and pushed her glasses higher up her
nose a couple of times. It must have sounded like desperation to
her, and of course it was. Mortifying and unadulterated
desperation.

She looked at me. "
Tu es vraiment
sympathique,
" she said. You are a really nice man.

"Perhaps, Peter, perhaps we can go to the
cinema after I have done my shopping."

My heart leapt. I don't know why we use that
expression. The heart is merely a pump. It does not leap. Actually,
it is a verily amazing pump. It pumps 10 liters of blood around
your system every minute and it beats 72 times in order to do it.
That is roughly 14,000 liters of blood
per day
and over
100,000 beats. Or 4 trillion liters of blood and 29 trillion beats
in your average lifetime. And whenever it stops, you die. We don't
know how it does it and we don't know why it does it, we talk about
electrical charges and so on and so forth, but we don't know where
they come from. Be that as it may, my heart, whether it had leapt
or not, had added a considerable number of beats to its programmed
workload today.

Just to be able to spend a few more hours
with this girl had somehow become a matter of great importance to
me. And if it had to be without sex, then that was O.K. with me
also. A strange feeling. A feeling belonging to the dreamy, erotic
and hopeless world of your average twelve year-old male.

We switched back to our silence routine as
far as the turn-off onto the A17 toward Reims, at which point I
dangerously edged a little further along my dead-end street. "Which
hotel are you staying in?" I asked.

"The Hotel Bristol," she replied. "The
street is the Rue de Verdun. Do you have a navigation system?" A
strange question nowadays for a car like mine, proof that even
teachers can have knowledge gaps.

I nodded and typed the address into the
system. For some reason there are millions of hotels in France
which go by the name of Bristol. The name is used by hotels of all
types, from luxury five star establishments right down through to
the low and also the
very
low categories. It's the way of
the world. When you have the money you stay in good hotels and when
you don't have the money, you don't. And as she was hitchhiking,
she can’t have much money, this was going to be one of the bad
hotels, one of the ones with musty smells and tiny, century-old
bathrooms and sheets which may be clean but don't look it. Not a
problem for me of course, it being 99.8% certain—my best
estimate—that I wouldn't be staying there anyway.

Even so, my hardworking neurons had worked
out a way to keep the remaining dregs of hope alive. Even if they
felt as the Germans must have done as the Russians closed in on
Berlin.

It was early evening when we reached the
hotel. It was in a back street somewhere and I had no problem
finding a place to park. I fetched her rucksack from the trunk. And
launched the last salvos of my impossible struggle.

"Céline," I said, "while you're checking in
and doing your shopping, I think I'll just take a nap here in the
car until it's cinema time. That will be around 8 o'clock, I think.
I'm tired, and I still have a lot of driving ahead of me."

I wasn't tired. This was King Canute trying
to turn the tide. Trying to have her take pity on me and invite me
up to her room.

Which she didn't.

"O.K.," she said, and off she went into the
hotel.

But she was back five minutes later. "You're
tired, Peter. Why don't you use my room while I'm out," she said.
"The desk is unattended at the moment, but be careful, check it
before you go through." And she gave me the key to her room, number
14.

Call me Wellington, not Canute. Blücher had
suddenly arrived. What a turnaround. I would never have thought it.
No way, not with this girl. The lottery chances were up to 70%, at
least 70%, in one fell swoop. My heart did its acceleration trick
again, it pumped like a suicidal maniac. Despite knowing that all
she was doing was being kind. But let us wait and see, you can
never tell, an angler’s patience is required. I would continue with
this ploy to the very end. This attempted ploy I mean, of
course.

"Thank you," I said, "that will be great.
Many thanks."

And off she went looking for shops, and off
I went along to the hotel. I looked in at the entrance. Nobody at
the desk, up the stairs as fast as I could and into her room. A
tiny room, a double bed right up against the side wall, just enough
space to walk around it. I closed the curtains, shut out the dusk,
got undressed and under the covers and lay facing the wall. I'll be
pretending to be faithfully asleep when she comes back. But I was
naked under those covers and she would see my naked back when she
came in. I would make sure she did. And what then?

And what then? Well, you won't believe
it.

She was back after only half an hour. She
switched the light on.

"Peter?" she said quietly, "are you
asleep?"

I put on a mumble and a sigh, and turned
onto my back and sat up. Top half naked, bottom half also
naked—under the covers.

"Not really," I said. "Too early,
probably."

"Oh," she said, "well…do you play
cards?"

Cards? CARDS? CARDS? I told you that you
wouldn't believe it. I myself, however, had no other choice but to
believe it. She rummaged around in her rucksack, found a pack of
cards, sat on the bed, explained some kind of a game to me and
started dealing. Me, naked in the bed. She, fully clothed on top of
it. Looking beautiful, tooth, ponytail, pushing up her glasses. And
we're playing cards.